Praise for David Cameron’s immigration policy from an unexpected source this morning; former Labour GLA member and the new chief of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Trevor Phillips: "For the first time in my adult life I heard a party leader clearly attempting to deracialise the issue of immigration and to treat it like […]
Samuel Coates and I are currently on the 29th floor of Millbank Tower waiting for David Cameron to speak to an assembled audience of CCHQ staff, candidates and journalists. According to PA this will be Mr Cameron’s main message: "He will tell an audience of candidates and activists in central London that to win power […]
I’ve written an article for Comment is free arguing that David Cameron is not ‘lurching to the right’. I argue that the issues of Europe, tax, crime and immigration cannot be crudely characterised as right-wing issues. I also say that David Cameron’s approach to these issues is very different to that pursued by Michael Howard […]
As I said on this morning’s Today programme (at 7.13am if you want to listen), there has most certainly been a rebalancing of the Cameron project in recent days. The Conservative leadership has started talking again about all of the core vote issues – crime (particularly), immigration, Europe and (to a lesser extent) tax. The […]
David Cameron gives a revealing interview to today’s Yorkshire Post in which he puts social breakdown at the heart of the Conservative pitch for the next General Election: "What’s the big question? Social breakdown. "What’s the big answer? Family and community policy. "What’s the big difference to Labour? They believe in top-down state control, ID […]
Lord Saatchi has today warned that "nicey-nicey" politics will not win us the next general election urging David Cameron to reach out to voters on the economy instead of focusing on branding. He said all of Mr Cameron’s efforts so far had been "to no avail". "Not a single poll in a single month in […]
Interviewed on Sky News David Cameron said: "This is the Conservative Party, but what we are not going to do is retreat to the comfort zone. I made changes to and with the Conservative Party over the last 18 months for a very clear purpose, to get us back into the centre ground, to get […]
Pasted below is an article I have written for the latest edition of the House Magazine. It doesn’t contain anything that’ll be very new to regular readers of this blog but it does summarise a lot of regular themes – not least the need for authenticity and for breadth.
I bore for Britain in recommending that the party embraces ‘the politics of and’. The persistence may be paying off. At a dinner with Tory MPs last night the Conservative leader announced that he was a believer in ‘the politics of and’ rather than of ‘or’! David Cameron gave three examples of the And theory: […]
I have written for this morning’s Guardian about the biggest three obstacles between David Cameron and a parliamentary majority. The full article is here but these are the three obstacles I identify: "The biggest obstacle is the persistence of the Lib Dems. They are the bindweed of politics. Once they’ve invaded territory they are stubbornly […]
Saturday’s newspapers are always a treat. You have Matthew Parris in The Times and Charles Moore in The Telegraph. In this morning’s Telegraph, Charles Moore pens a bird’s eye view of Project Cameron and he is optimistic about its chances of success. He begins by attempting to rebut the contention of "best friends and fellow-Thatcherites" […]
"Decontamination" is a word I’m suddenly hearing/ reading a lot in connection with what David Cameron has achieved for his first year as leader. I did a pre-record for Radio 4 yesterday and was asked about the decontamination of the Conservative Party and Irwin Stelzer has used the term in an article he has written […]
Matthew Parris in today’s Times: "Mr Cameron must be brave in the way Jack Straw was brave this week when he wrote what he did about the Muslim veil. He must say or do something that he genuinely believes to be important and right but which will hurt or annoy significant numbers of people, including […]
Snippets of Dr Liam Fox’s Sunday interview with GMTV are picked up in a number of newspapers this morning and Iain Dale has a full transcript. Dr Fox appears to be calling for David Cameron to offer a broader conservatism – emphasing core and breadth policy issues: "We avoid external coalitions in our politics by […]
Recent polls have suggested that voters sense that David Cameron’s changes to the Conservative Party are more spin than substance. Last week in Manchester the Tory leader promised faster, deeper and wider change in response to the doubters but is there something too ambitious – too incredible – about the pace of the current change […]